For the recent launch of the Chevrolet Spark in Mexico Gear Factor has designed and produced two flying versions of the car model. It has been the first time an Gear Factor flying car has been utilized in this market. A series of events and guerrilla marketing actions were planned during the 201
0 Fifa World Cup, developed and arranged by GM Mexico's lead advertising agency McCann-Erickson. In cooperation with McCanns we devised a series of suitable applications for the Flying Sparks in line with the overall launch strategy.

For a period of nearly two weeks a series of events took place at a variety of locations. One Gear Factor team toured in Mexico City from shopping mall to shopping mall and surprised the shoppers with a flying presentation of the Chevy Spark. In similar style the other Gear Factor team operated twice at the Mexico City international airport in terminal 2. We hope sincerely nobody missed a flight!

The Flying Chevrolet Spark on Mexican TV: the buzz began

The most exciting part of this project was to fly one Spark in several high-profile Mexican TV shows of broadcasting networks such as Azteca and Telemundo. The TV shows were partly live and partly recorded. The live television programs have been of course the rather suspenseful gigs and the Gear Factor team piloted the flying car to perfection, but not without a few drops of sweat here and there. The word of the Flying Chevrolet Spark has spread quickly hereafter and a few other networks like MTV showed up, to get their footage of the 'talk of the town'. We would say, General Motors has made the most out of their advertising budget with this highly successful campaign and we had a lot of fun being part of its conversion. Actually the Spark launch became sort of a reference project for us, when we need to explain to our clients how to get the most value and impact out of our flying solutions. The events and actions have been so cleverly linked up that the buzz in the city reached quickly incredible levels. Youtube, like always, tells us the story.

When we uploaded this video three years ago the traffic was very modest, but then this outdoor clip of an Gear Factor Flying Car took off far beyond what we could ever have imagined.

Every day this video is watched by an average of 12.000 users around the globe and has received thousands of 'likes' and comments. It is our best horse to market our unique remote-controlled flying event technology to event planners and marketing executives on a very broad platform. We planned to talk about this for a long time, but now it seems the right moment to mention it: this amazing video is ranked around the top 15 search results for the
keyword 'car' on Youtube and is in the top three Google results for the search term 'flying car'. OK, it's a bit mischievous to call it a 'real flying car' in the
description, but then it is one
of our very real event products flying around in a village. The footage is actually from an experimental flight in ideal outdoor conditions.

Because of the high realism we achieve with car models the debate on Youtube (over 7800 comments so far) is quite fierce whether this is a real Opel Astra, a blimp, computer graphics or some kind of magical trick. Believe it or not, dozens of folks have contacted us and wanted to purchase one believing it's an actual flying car or wanted to order upgrade kits for their vehicles. Sorry, can't help there!

Chevrolet Detroit utilized for the first time the Flying Sonic at this year's International Auto Show in Atlanta. The Gear Factor Flying Car performed to perfection and was commented the most exciting attraction at this event. The project was conducted in cooperation with Jack Morton Worldwide, who developed the concept of the Chevrolet booth at this exhibition.

The Atlanta International Auto Show is not the largest car show around, but has a unique cosy atmosphere, perfect to take an Gear Factor Flying Car to the air. The Flying Chevy Sonic was executed to perfection and its realistic design with a high level of detail made many in the crowd believe this is a real car taking off. For once there was plenty of space and the Flying Sonic cruised over the whole Chevrolet stand much to the enjoyment of the Chevy product managers and models. Of course they were a bit scared at first by such a large object flying close to them overhead. Our explanations that an Gear Factor Flying Car weighs only 5kg, is based on lighter-than-air technology and therefore can't fall out of the sky reassured all staff and they played around with this surprising show during their car presentations. In fact, Chevrolet was the only car brand at this motor show that offered it's visitors some exciting entertainment. No wonder, the Chevrolet stand was comparatively well attended (what happened to car shows in the US by the way?). Especially the kids were very ecstatic and danced along under the Flying Chevy Sonic all the way. You can watch a video here.